


Moment of Surrender

by fredesrojo



Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: ...ish, 2.09 filler/alternate scene, F/M, Sort of AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-17
Updated: 2013-12-17
Packaged: 2018-01-04 23:55:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1087136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fredesrojo/pseuds/fredesrojo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>-She doesn't really process anything after she leaves Will in Hair and Makeup.-</p>
<p>Alternate look to the Season 2 finale, where Mac doesn't show back up in the control room after Will reveals the ring as a practical joke.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Moment of Surrender

**Author's Note:**

  * For [simplyprologue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplyprologue/gifts).



> For Emily, because we only seem to have these sorts of plot-intensive discussions at ungodly hours of the morning.

She doesn’t really process anything after she leaves Will in Hair and Makeup.

Doesn’t think, can’t consider the quiet “I’m sorry” still ringing in her ears, can’t process the wave of hurt that prompted her to send him across the room away from where her hands could hit, could hurt.

Hallway, turn corner, walk, newsroom-- _not the control room she can’t go in the control room_ \--find a quiet place to hide away-- _don’t think about his face don’t think about his apology don’t think don’t think don’t **think** , Mackenzie_.

Mostly it’s still that overwhelming wave of anger and hurt, but rolling under that is the dawning realization--she’s been taking the perceived punishment, sitting idly by while Will and life continually dump things over her head, and now this, the truth about the damned ring spilled out between them.

(Was this his blow-up? Did Will choose to go quiet and devastating rather than loud and destructive? The voice in her head that normally defends Will to its dying breath, claims _no, Billy wouldn’t do that, Billy would never_ is conspicuously silent now--and isn’t that laughable, even her pitiful heartbroken subconscious can’t find it in itself to defend Will, not anymore.)

Mac finds herself in an empty stairwell a good ways away from the News Night floor, body hunched up against the cold concrete wall with her arms tucked protectively around her knees. After a brief shuffle to kick her shoes off, she settles more comfortably against the wall and thinks back.

(Did she deserve all of this? Did she stand idly by and accept what truly wasn’t her due on the simple principle that she felt that she _did_ deserve it?)

At least he’s fired her already.

Mac can wait here until after the election is called, the newsroom emptied, and then go and pack her office.

She’ll go back to England this time, she thinks.

Atlanta, Los Angeles, D.C. all seem far too close, too easy for Will to find her again (if he even bothers to look, a snide voice mutters in the back of her mind)--she has to get out of America, get out from under all of the things that will remind her of Will, remind her of News Night.

She’ll somehow have to convince Jim to stay, if Reese Lansing doesn’t fire the rest of the News Night crew. But she hopes beyond hope that Will’s firing her will be the frayed thread to undo the intricate web Dantana’s tried to weave around them--if she’s also fired, he has no grounds for wrongful termination, right?

(Even now, Mac thinks, she’s still producing, still finding ways to make the show live on even without her behind the wheel as producer. The list runs thus: If News Night still exists in the morning, make Jim stay, coach him and Don quietly via email for a few months to make sure the show they’d all built together doesn’t completely fall apart. Leave New York, leave America behind, and go take that job at the BBC her mother has been nagging about for years. Try to move on, try to forget Will, forget the ring, forget that they can’t be fixed and they’ll always be stuck in a perpetual cycle of wounding one another.)

This can be her final gift, final payment in body and soul to the great William Duncan McAvoy--she’ll leave, disappear from his life entirely, set things up so he has the potential to keep doing the kind of show a man of his caliber ought to be doing.

A low, slightly hysterical giggle bubbles up from her throat, hitching her breath into staccato gasps--is this what he’d felt like all those years ago, the gutting betrayal that burned inside like a physical wound?

The fucking _ring_ , Brian, Nina fucking Howard, the looming spectre of his goddamned non-compete clause, they all flicker past her mind’s eye in a whirling kaleidoscope of hurt and betrayal.

He was right. Six years wasn’t enough time. There would never be enough time.

She’s been deluding herself this whole time, thinking he could ever forgive her, that they could ever forgive each other and work together again.

Jesus Christ, how fucking stupid has she been, tripping after him for two years, taking every hit with cheek presented in perfect target.

(No wonder Brian looked so fucking smug the whole time he was there. She’s pitiful, really.)

Unending optimism meet the startling and dreadful clarity of the real world, Mac.

She’s fucked it all up--they’ve fucked it all up--nothing will ever be right again.

There is no News Night, Reese is going to fire all of them anyways regardless of Will’s firing her and he won’t be able to do the news anymore, and she’s wasted the last two years trailing after Will like a kicked puppy taking insults from its handler because of some misplaced idealistic notion that she could fix them, that _they_ could fix them.

For the first time in her life she has the tools to be free of Will McAvoy forever and still she hesitates, still she can’t seem to let go.

The betrayal, the hurt burning in her gut, in her _heart_ , should be more than enough to leave this all behind, write him off, run away again Mackenzie, it’s what you do. Sloan’s repeated notion that she didn’t deserve all of this, didn’t deserve to be Will’s virtual whipping boy scrolls through her mind on repeat--she didn’t deserve this, Will’s been trying to hurt her just as badly as she did him this whole time and Mac still has some idealized cast of him stood up on a pedestal.

(That pedestal doesn’t seem so high and mighty now, more of a lump of cracked granite slipping away between his polished shoes, he’s slipping, they’re slipping, it’s all broken now.)

It’s the crumbling of the great Will McAvoy, champion of the masses, orator to the electorate, and oh how far do the mighty fall.

_“I’m sorry for this but the ring was a practical joke.”_

Thumping along steadily under all of this is the seed of a fraction of a thought-- _this whole time she’s been taking all of it as more than her due, and now...what?_

What does she do?

Does she leave--(pros, she thinks: she’d never have to look at Will again, a fresh start, a chance to begin anew, a chance to pull out of this apparent cycle of undeserved punishment; and cons: she’d be leaving the newsroom, leaving News Night, leaving Jim, leaving all they’ve built all they’ve accomplished god they’ve fucked everything up so badly how do they do this?) does she stay but if she stays how to continue on, how to move on with this new tarnished image of Will standing in the forefront of her mind.

_“It was a rejoinder, really…”_

Et tu, Brute? she thinks, almost laughing to herself, except there’s something wrong with her body it’s not working right her laugh is more of a wheeze and the stairwell keeps swimming in her vision she’s probably just had her eyes open too long and Will wasn’t kidding earlier about the exhaustion now that she thinks about it it almost pulls at her like a physical being, demanding her body succumb to the cloying draw of the darkness for a little while. Maybe she should--just a nap really, a chance for her mind to go _blank_ , a hard reset as it were.

She’s been living the last two years--last six, really, since she left--akin to an inmate headed for death row, appeal after appeal presented to the unforgiving system of life and love and denied at each turn by the specter of a blonde haired god with Justice’s scales grasped in one big hand but now those scales have tipped in the other direction and she’s the one staring down at the tousle-haired little boy begging for forgiveness.

Intellectually, Mac thinks, she’s always understood his need for _time_. Or, at least, she did. Tonight’s plea for him to speak candidly (and oh, candid was he, she should have expected that) and the argument about time and twenty-eight months--twenty eight months in Afghanistan and Pakistan and Afghanistan again and Jim was shot and she was stabbed and she’d thought _this was penance enough maybe_ and came back--but then she remembers the day his father died and watching the play of emotions across his face and listening to remembrances of thirty-odd years of hatred and betrayal and a wounded boy who grew up trying to be everything his father was not. Her guilt trip, goading him into firing her, stings like raw antiseptic poured over a wound now ( _“I was a good guy. I was a **good** guy.”_ ).

Will is a good guy, intrinsically, or for the most part anyways. Perhaps they were both setting themselves up for failure within the first iteration of them, what with her apotheosis of his goodness--too good for her, she believed, and _we accept the love we think we deserve_ whispers from the back of her mind--and the way Will fell so headlong for her. (Mac’s not quite gotten over that deification of him, she thinks, and now again she’s watching the temple to his greatness crumble to ash and dust around her.)

But now they’re both standing on the other side of all of this, looking at the pedestal and the temple fallen to ruin, and _she doesn’t have to be punished anymore, she doesn’t have to **take** this_. The guilt and the blame for how they fell apart the first time has been steadily shifting, brick by brick, and it’s no longer precariously stacked high across her back.

(Once again, her thoughts loop back to the original question: _what does she do?_ )

It finally pierces the bubble of her consciousness that her Blackberry has been lighting up and buzzing by her side for an indeterminate amount of time--she doesn’t pick it up though.

(It’s Will, she thinks, but he’s fired her now and she’s not obligated to answer to him any more.)

She rather dimly realizes that it still seems to be hard to properly get air all the way into her lungs, most likely a consequence of her hunched over position which crunches the lungs and other organs down in the trunk to accommodate the body being contorted in ways its not normally contorted in and her vision keeps blurring at the edges slightly and she’s still just so damn exhausted and she really should get up and move and start on this new path and clear out her office.

Who knows, she might get up to the newsroom and find that Reese has fired them all anyways (and then the mental image of Jane Barrow filling in Will’s spot behind the anchor desk sends her into a round of hiccuping laughter right there on the floor and there’s a stitch in her side just under her last rib on the left side that burns with each stuttering gasp of hysterics).

She imagines now how Reese and Leona would struggle to reboot the “once great brand” of ACN with snakelike Jane Barrow sitting behind the anchor desk with all of her false smiles and badly concealed cynicism and it’s finally through all of this that she realizes there’s someone crouched in front of her in the stairwell and her vision blurs and coalesces into Will, tie and jacket gone but still wearing the shirt and trousers from tonight’s broadcast. His mouth is moving and moving and she still can’t quite puzzle out the words until her ears click back on and everything comes back in a rush of sound and sensation, frantic words and warm hands against her shoulders.

“Mac, Mac, please answer me, Mac, Jesus. _Mac_.”

Mac draws in a deep breath (and now that whatever bubble that had been blanketing her awareness has popped, her heart seems unnaturally loud and fast and her breathing even now is more than a good bit wheezy sounding and definitely uneven) and tries to push him away, shrugging his hands off of her shoulders. “I’m fine.”

“Where the fuck--you can’t--” Will drops from the almost squat he’d been crouched in front of her back onto his ass, his legs splaying oddly. He shoves a hand through his hair (no more product, she notes, which means that he’s been doing that for a while now, running a hand through his hair) and blows out an explosive sigh. “ _Jesus_ , Mac.”

“I’m fine,” She repeats dully, not quite looking at him. If she looks at him she has to make a decision and she can’t make a decision right now. ( _What should she do?_ )

“You weren’t--you left in the middle of an election broadcast!” He levers himself around to sit against the wall perpendicular to hers, big tall body sprawled out on the stair landing, incongruous in Armani charcoal pants and a light blue pressed shirt with polished black shoes splayed awkwardly--and then she realizes he’s still talking.

“Dammit, Mac, you can’t just up and leave in the middle of a fucking broadcast.” Will slumps against the wall.

“You fired me.” Mac can’t seem to find more than cursory, short responses to all of his yelling and pleading and she doesn’t know if it’s still simmering anger about the bloody ring or if she’s just apathetic to it all now. She works to steady her breathing more and leans her head back against the wall, still hugging her knees. “I don’t have to listen to you anymore.”

Will’s head jerks to the side out of the corner of her eye and she knows he’s probably gaping at her but honestly at this point she could give a fuck. She sees the line of his jaw work for a moment, like he’s thinking through his words, and then finally he speaks.

“I’m not firing you. I’m taking it back.”

That finally gets to her and she snaps her head back to level a glare at him. “You can’t take it back.” And then, because she’s still angry, “Seriously, what the fuck are you, five?”

“I am taking it back. I’m not firing you, it didn’t happen, you can’t resign and Charlie and I aren’t resigning and Reese even said he’s not firing anyone, so if Charlie and I aren’t fired then neither are you.” Will nods a little, gaining confidence as his speech continues. “It wouldn’t have counted anyways because no one knew and it’s a Tuesday and your contract specifically says I can’t fire you any day of the week but Fridays. You’re out of luck, it didn’t stick, and Reese and Leona are going to stand behind us and Rebecca’s going to win the case. So, there.”

“You can’t take it back just because you feel guilty, Billy,” She says wearily. She’s so tired. “Just let me go, alright? Dantana will have to drop the suit because he won’t have a leg to stand on with wrongful termination if I’ve been fired too.”

Will ignores her, seemingly, and folds his arms across his chest. “Reese said nobody’s getting fired, so I’m unfiring you, and that’s final.” He reaches up and scrubs a hand through his hair again, leaving it slightly wild looking and sticking up a bit in the back. “I reacted to your goading earlier and I shouldn’t have and while I understand why you said what you said I’m not going to take it at face value anymore because you’re exhausted and you’re taking way too much of the blame over Genoa--and I think that’s kind of my fault a little because I mistakenly agreed with your pronouncement of guilt over…” His hand waves vaguely in midair between them. “You know, us. And then you took that and extrapolated to Genoa and you know, I actually give a lot less of a fuck about my professional life since we started doing our show, so that’s not true either.” He sobers a bit, frowning.

Mac sighs. “That’s still not...you can’t magically fix everything by not firing me.”

He sets his jaw, still frowning a little. “The thing with the ring, that was stupid and I don’t know why I thought--no, okay, I do know why I thought telling you because it was the same sort of situation you put me in when you told me about Brian, and I-”

“You wanted to punish me, we’ve been over this.” She cuts him off. “I don’t care--I-I...I don’t know what the fuck to think about the ring but I’m not your...your-- _whipping boy_ anymore I don’t have to take the punishments, damn it, I’ve more than served my fucking due for what I did to you.” It registers somewhere subconsciously that her breathing has gotten out of control again, but she has to get this out while she can still think of the right words to articulate it. “A--and if, if you...I’m done waiting for forgiveness--I can’t keep myself locked up forever, and you keep lumping shit on my head with Brian and that _fucking_ voicemail that I never heard or answered to and you have the fucking nerve to bring up that ring as a joke--I-I mean what am I supposed to think, ‘oh it’s okay the ring was a joke because I _deserve_ it’ and and you just... _I’m done paying for it!_ ”

The last words are choked out in between great gulping wheezes for air, and that subconscious note from before is screaming great loud klaxons in her head now. Will rather looks like she’s clubbed him over the head with something blunt, staring at her silently with that same look he’d had in Hair and Makeup hours previously, but she can’t fucking breathe and so she shifts her position against the wall enough to get her head between her knees and tries to remember Jim’s calm cadence of reassurance the last time this happened in Afghanistan, but she’s fucking done it now, she went and blurted everything out and now Will has to realize she’s fucking lost it completely, and that starts up the wheezing anew.

“Easy, Mac, just breathe, nice and slow for me, Mac, just breathe, you’re okay.”

It takes a moment to register that Will has in fact moved so that he’s pressed close to her, one big hand rubbing up and down her back as he talks a steady, calm stream of words which slowly start to penetrate the oxygen starved fog blanketing her mind. Under his palm, coached by the steady cadence of his words, she sucks in a slower breath, hiccups, gets another slow deep inhale (he must be sitting with his arm around her body because she can feel the measured rise and fall of his chest against her side), and gradually starts to even out her breathing.

Will keeps up a steady stream of mostly nonsense in her ear the whole time, quiet and grounding in that way he’s always been for her--he makes the thoughts in her head stop spinning and whirling and rather they coalesce into a cogent train of thought that she can pursue without splintering off on tangents.

Eventually (finally), she has to sit up and move away from him. Mac shifts one of her Christian Louboutins out of the way as she props herself up against the bottom step of whatever the fuck staircase she’d picked, and she fiddles with a slight scuff at the bottom of the heel rather than look directly at him.

(Even without a direct line of sight, Will looks distinctly unsettled by her meltdown, and she can already see him gearing up for a long inquisition into what had just happened.)

Better to head him off at the pass. “I failed a psych eval about six months after I was stabbed in Islamabad. The Associated Press decided that because of that failed evaluation they couldn’t rightly keep a producer/reporter with PTSD in an active war-zone so they terminated our positions overseas. When I came back to the states, no one would hire me because I guess it got out about the evaluation. I talked to Charlie and went and saw you at Northwestern and talked to Charlie some more and ended up here.” The entire confession is quiet and almost robotic in nature because she can’t talk about it otherwise, not without falling headfirst into another panic attack.

(What she doesn’t elaborate on, won’t elaborate on, is that she’d been skipping psych evals for months after the stabbing and just so happened to get unluckily cornered into the final one that ended her two year flight from the devastation she’d left in New York.)

She keeps her gaze focused intently on the shoe as she continues. “Between that and the insomnia and you understand why I haven’t been quite up to my usual standards lately.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Will sounds low, almost gutted, but she can’t look up at him. “Mac, I…” He shifts, seems to twig on something. “You--the first day, at the elevators, you lied. Charlie said you were mentally and physically exhausted. You brushed me off.”

Mac forces a laugh, harsh and false as it echoes a little in the concrete and metal of the stairs. “You don’t think that would’ve been more than a little emotionally manipulative, really?”

He seems to concede that point with a slight nod, looking almost frustrated with himself. (With them, perhaps? Well, good, she thinks, because she’s just about had it with their antics herself.)

“Have you had any other triggers?” The question hangs between them for a moment, and Will looks almost embarrassed that he’s asked, but then he presses on. “Since you’ve come back, I mean.”

She shrugs. “There’s a couple days I don’t particularly handle well, but Jim’s usually good--we sit and talk on the phone about all the stupid things that reminded us of home.” Mac bites her lip, glancing at him sidelong under the slight curtain of her hair. “The only other bad one was the night I found you in your apartment.”

Will pales a little at that, eyes widening. “I didn’t…”

“You were asleep the first two days, and Lonny practically forced me to go home that first night.” One shoulder lifts and falls in a half-hearted shrug. “I got stuck in a nightmare where you were already dead when we found you.”

There’s a brief scuffle of clothing and shoes against concrete and then Will by her side, awkwardly folding his tall frame back down to sit almost pressed against her side. He fidgets restlessly for a moment and then lets one hand fall to the scant inches of space between them, palm up and inviting.

Mac drops her free hand and lightly curls her fingers around his after a moment, squeezing gently in comfort.

“I’m sorry.” Will keeps his gaze focused on the wall opposite, chin up, the only sign of his agitation the subtle flex of his hand under hers. “I’m sorry. I know it’s...stupid, really, I didn’t know. But I wish you would have…” His mouth twists, obviously frustrated. “I get why you didn’t tell me, and I’m sorry that I haven’t shown you that trust where you would have felt comfortable telling me.” He sighs, squeezes her hand lightly again. “I’m sorry.”

“Not really within either of our control, so…” She shrugs, feels a slow laugh building in her chest.

He glances at her askance when she giggles, the sound bouncing much more joyfully around the enclosed space then her last laugh had. “What was that for?”

“I mean look at the two of us.” Mac raises their joined hands, gestures between them. “We’re a right fucking mess, aren’t we?”

The corner of his mouth twists into a small grin.

She giggles again, sighing. “Oh, Will.”

They’ve both fucked so many things up between them, around them, within them.

She has to make a decision.

“We’ve fucked up a lot of things between us, Will.”

The smile on his lips falters slightly, dipping into a frown.

Mac squeezes his hand lightly, giving him a half smile. “Maybe it’s just time to decide. Here, now. We’ve pretty well fucked up everything at this point, and we’ve got two options. We cut and run, and I leave ACN, or we make the decision together to put this all behind us and move forward, together.”

Will’s grasp on her hand tightens frantically, and there’s a slightly wild look in his eyes. “Mac, you’re not...I said you weren’t fired!”

“You can still do the show without me, Billy. It’s hardly rocket science.”

“No.” His jaw juts forward stubbornly as he says it, and his brow is furrowed deeply. “No, you’re not leaving.” He redoubles his grip on her hand, suddenly seeming to come to a decision. “You said one time that you could leave and I’d be able to do this show with any other producer, but you’re wrong. I can’t do _our_ show with another producer, and I wouldn’t do our show with another producer in my ear, ever. Not when I could have you. I need you in my ear, I need you producing, or none of this matters.”

Will suddenly turns in the scant space of the landing, his knee jutting up against her thigh a little as he fumbles for something in the pocket of his trousers, and then there’s something small and shiny held between the index and thumb of his free hand, and he’s looking at her solemnly.

“...I didn’t return it.”

“Wait…” Jesus fucking _Christ_ it’s the goddamned ring and he’s still holding her hand and they’re in a fucking stairwell.

“I didn’t return it because I’m in love with you and um, I don’t want to do this show--I--I don’t want to do our show without you because it’s not, um...will you marry me?”

“Excuse me?”

“I said ‘will you marry me’ and before that I said ‘I’m in love with you. That’s what I’m...that’s what I’m getting at. I don’t want to cut and run from all the stuff we’ve fucked up, I want to put it behind us and move forward together and I--I really think I could probably be doing this better, maybe if I could start over-”

“What the _fuck_ is happening right now.” Not her most eloquent by any standards but _he’s holding the fucking ring_ and _he’s proposing, you idiot_.

“I don’t ever want to--no, wait, I’m in love with you, I love you, I’m going back to that, and will you marry me? And I really...please say yes, I really think you should say yes--but no matter...I don’t care, no I do care what you say but no matter what, there’s no chance that I’m ever going to hurt you again. And no matter what, I’m gonna be in love with you for the rest of my life--there’s no way out of that, it’s just a physical law of the universe. You own me, period. No matter-”

“Yes.” She cuts him off mid thought, quiet but sure, the most ridiculous grin spread across her face.

“I-I will never stop--”

“Yes.”

“I won’t...wait, yes?” Will blinks at her a little stupidly, adorably confused and _dear god she loves this man_. “You’re...you’re saying yes,” He checks, hesitant but realization is dawning slowly.

“Yes!”

Immediately a brilliant, relieved smile spreads like wildfire across his face, eyes crinkled at the corners.

Will fumbles with the ring for a moment and then finds the correct hand and finger, slipping it on with slightly shaking hands, and then she lunges up from the floor and practically falls across his lap, knocking them both off balance so Will ends up sprawled on his back with her perched above, forearms resting against his chest. He grins up at her, utterly delighted with a subtle gentleness shining from his eyes, and she leans down and kisses him, left hand slowly sliding up to rest against his shoulder.

The ring glints at her out of the corner of her eye as they part for breath. “Took you long enough.”

“Seriously?” Will mumbles, lips brushing against her own. “That’s what you’re…”

“Shut it.” Mac claims his mouth again, relaxing more fully against his body and they really should think about getting off of this stair landing sometime soon.

But right now, she’s right where she’s meant to be.

 


End file.
